Chapter 25

Lee leaned on a workstation in Xohn’s lab, analyzing the logs of the datapad while they continued discussing Duryss.

Reeves explained, “An invasion fleet is headed to Chelum, and our task force is meant to repel them.”

“The ThermARC should not be used for combat!” Xohn was adamant.

“Like it or not, that’s what they’re going to be used for,” Reeves replied, cold and unsympathetic.

“The production ThermARC modules will not hold long. They have at max fifteen minutes of use before the heat becomes runaway. There was not enough time for the tests to help me identify stable parameters. They will leak heat that will build up until…” He made an ‘explosion’ gesture with his hands.

“Well, that sounds bad,” Lee said. “But what about the prototype on the Nightcrawler?”

“That is the one that took me two years to identify the exact right parameters. It works as intended. Theoretically it has no limit to how long it will operate as long as the ship is producing heat.”

“So it’s only the mass-production versions that won’t work?” Reeves asked.

Xohn nodded. “They used materials based on available supplies, costs, and keeping the project secret. It meant new harmonic parameters that I tried to warn them about, but Duryss was in a big hurry to get it done.”

“It doesn’t matter, Xohn, you did what you could,” Lee tried to assuage his frustrations.

Reeves straightened, “It’s a tactical advantage to know the weakness of these devices. Thank you, Master Xohn.”

He hesitated before giving her a slight bow of his head.

“So do we know who’s invading? Is it a corporate takeover?” Lee asked.

Reeves shook her head, “I wasn’t given any details, most likely on purpose. Lee, you need to get up to Duryss’s office. We need to find something that implicates him in the coverups, manipulating the press… something.”

“What, he didn’t tell you in your hallway discussion?” Lee said with an accusatory tone.

“Duryss plays it very close to the vest. He told me the Resistance was a sideshow. Our main objective is to repel an invasion force, not who or where they’re coming from. The only thing I know for sure is that it’s not the Resistance, and it’s not Thargoids.”

“Right. So that leaves a corporate faction,” Lee suggested.

“Not the Imperials or the Alliance?” Xohn asked. Being relatively new to the region, he didn’t know the ins-and-outs of corporate politics.

Lee explained, “The entire Hyades region is a Sirius Gov managed area. Systems under Sirius Gov are purchased by Li Yong-Rui. An invasion by a superpower would ignite an interstellar war. And for an invasion force of that scale, there’d be a fleet build-up that wouldn’t go unnoticed. We’d have heard about it on GalNet, at least.”

Reeves nodded in agreement, “Regardless, we need to figure out who we’re up against, even if it means a list of factions Duryss suspects might invade. We need to get you up to his office. His workstation is on an isolated network. There’s no access to it remotely. Xohn, I’ll take you back to the starport so you can join the others. Would you be willing to work aboard the Decimator to improve our ThermARC?”

“No! Where Lee goes, I go.” Xohn slid closer to where Lee was standing in the lab.

“Master Xohn, I understand you have no reason to trust me, but getting one person into the Consular’s office will be difficult. Getting two will raise far too much suspicion.”

Lee looked at Xohn, “It’ll be easier for me if I go it alone on this one.”

Xohn mouthed the word ‘no’ back to Lee, an urgent expression on his face.

“Go with her. It’ll be alright. She’s kept her word so far. She’s taking the biggest risk: turning against her boss, the most powerful person in the Hyades.”

“It’s okay,” Reeves waved it off. “Trust is earned, and I’ve done nothing to earn it. I showed up, unannounced, with a close friend.”

Lee cocked his head at that. Initially, It sounded earnest, but he couldn’t mistake the subtle manipulation. It set his teeth on edge, but bringing Xohn with him wasn’t an option. “Xohn, for now, let Reeves get you to the starport. Jackson, Tarrek, and everyone else are there. I’ll get back there as soon as I can. Well, now,” he smiled, still working the datapad. “What do we have here?”

“What?” Reeves and Xohn said almost at the same time.

“A certain Consular’s identity,” he looked over at Reeves and gave her a respectful bow of his head.

“My pleasure. So, do you trust me enough now?”

“Good enough for me, Colonel,” he said. “Xohn?”

“Alright, Lee, I’ll go with her,” he said, bowing his head in deference.

Lee asked Reeves, “So, how do I get to the office from here?”

“I’ll authorize the lift to take you to the office level; then we’ll head back down and take a shuttle back to the starport. You’ll need to find a way into and out of the office on your own.”

“Hmm…” he looked around the lab. It was filled with terminal displays and an assortment of equipment spread on the center work tables. He sat down at a workstation and pulled out his datapad. The proximity of the workstation to the datapad brought up a prompt to connect the two. He acknowledged it and set to exploring the network. In a few moments, he found access to the starport network that allowed him to establish a connection to the Nightcrawler.

Xohn was hovering over his shoulder and asked, “What are you looking for on the Nightcrawler, Lee?”

“My old datapad had all my greatest hits on it. I just need to re-image this one with the backup on the Nightcrawler.”

After restoring his new datapad, he immediately sent a nodesweeper program across the connection. It located the routing nodes and reset them, wiping out any trace of network access from the lab.

Reeves stood at a distance, waiting with her arms crossed, “Do you have a plan to make it into the office or not?”

He stood up, picking up the datapad and held it up in front of him. “I do now,” he said with a self-satisfied smile. “C’mon, let’s go!” He gestured toward the door and waited for Reeves. She was caught by surprise, and half stumbled getting up from leaning on a workstation table to lead them out of the lab.

While they walked, Lee worked on his datapad with one hand, frantically running commands. He could feel Xohn following close behind, trying to peek over his shoulder to catch sight of what he was doing. By the time they arrived at the lift, Lee had finished his work and initiated an upload of his newly completed package of routines.

They rode the lift to the top floors of the building that housed the administrative office level of the Hyades regional government. The lift doors opened, and Reeves said in a low voice, “Here you go, Mr. Sollinger.”

Lee put a hand to his right hip pocket, “Can you hold the lift here just a few minutes?”

“What?” Reeves asked, confused. Even Xohn had a curious look on his face.

“Just wait here,” Lee said, walking off the lift into the hall with an entirely new demeanor. With a purposeful step and fake confidence, he walked through the large lobby. While walking, he noticed an open doorway to what looked like a maintenance closet. As the door began to shut, he shuffled over and caught the edge before it could close. The door re-opened and he ducked in. He found a loose maintenance jacket and threw it on over his jumpsuit.

From there, he continued his power walk to the desk before a long hall with massive columns and ornate double doors at the end. He assumed that the doors lead to the governor’s office. He stopped in front of the desk with a thin-framed woman sitting behind a terminal. He palmed the object from his pocket. When she finally noticed him, she looked up from her display, “May I help you?”

“Yes, I’m uh… Tom… Tom, from maintenance.”

She sat there waiting for him. When he stalled too long for her, she gave an exasperated sigh, “And?”

“And… I have orders from Duryss to deliver this here.” He placed the object on the desk in front of her, and it gleamed in the light.

“Oh, one of those cute little condo-sentries! An expensive Imperial one,” the woman almost seemed to squeal in delight. “Did he get it for me?”

“Uhh…” Lee was shocked. It couldn’t be this easy. “Yes! Yes, he did! He wanted you to have it for your desk as a… uh… a memento.”

She giggled like a schoolgirl, “He can be so thoughtful.” She held it in her hands, turning it back and forth.

“Yeah, thoughtful. Whatever. Hey, anyways, he says you’re supposed to keep it here for the night, so he knows you got it… and…”

“Yes, of course, thank you… What did you say your name was?”

He paused, incredulous at her gullibility. “Never mind, you have a nice day, miss.” Then he spun on his heels and made for the lift. He shook his head as he re-entered the lift where Reeves and Xohn stood waiting for him. Lee held his thumbnail up to his mouth, but stopped short of putting it in his mouth, still shaking his head in disbelief at how easy it was.

“You’re done already?”

He stopped shaking his head and nodded back to Reeves.

“Well,” she put her hands on her hips to wait for him.

He looked up, “Well, what?”

She half scowled, annoyance spreading across her face, “Well, what did you learn?”

“Oh! Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“Yeah, nothing yet.”

“Well, weren’t you supposed to make it in his office while we head back to the starport?”

He shook his head again in disbelief. “It’s never been that easy before,” he mumbled out loud.

“Easy, so you did get something?”

“Oh, no, like I said, not yet,” Lee smiled at her.

“I’m confused,” Reeves turned her hands out in an exasperated motion.

“I have to say, I am also confused, Lee,” Xohn said.

“Look, I’m not going to break in the governor’s office and get stuck up here. I’ll do it from a nice safe distance when I’m safely on the Nightcrawler, okay?”

“Well, you might have explained that part of the plan to us.”

Lee shrugged, “I didn’t have the plan until about ten minutes ago. Anyways, what are we waiting for?”

Reeves looked up to the ceiling as if the lift’s computerized awareness lived up there, “Lift, ground floor, please.”

A tone of acknowledgment sounded. The doors closed, and the lift sent them speeding down.

At the starport, Lee rushed across the hangar, eager to reach the Nightcrawler. Reeves and Xohn were behind him but didn’t try to keep up. It had been more than a month since he’d seen her and his excitement got the better of him. Ship after unfamiliar ship were lined up on transit pads. He passed several mid-sized vessels, and near the end of the row found the Para Bellum. Behind the sleekness of the Fer-de-lance, he found the dark hull and distinctive angles of the Nightcrawler. He stopped at the gangway to the back of the transit pad to look her over. She was beaten to high heaven with wear and tear at almost every edge. The contrast was striking next to the sparkling Para Bellum with only a few visible battle scars. But, she was his—she was “home.”

Reeves and Xohn showed up a few minutes later.

“She is in better shape than she looks, Lee,” Xohn said, huffing from trying to catch up to him.

“What do you mean? She looks great!”

“Lee, we need that intel,” Reeves said with a respectful urgency.

“Then let’s get on board,” Lee started toward the ship. “Xohn, what did you mean she’s in better shape than she looks?”

“I had some spare time. When I wasn’t working on the ThermARCs for Duryss, I came down here to work on her.”

“Wait, you didn’t…” Lee stopped on the ramp.

“I know what she means to you. I didn’t break anything!”

Lee couldn’t keep the scowl off his face. “What… did… you do?”

“Just upgrades! It was only upgrades, I promise.”

“What kind of upgrades?” Lee asked through gritted teeth.

“I didn’t touch the COVAS… I finished integrating the enhanced shields and tweaked them to work with the ThermARC. It keeps your systems from overloading and shutting down.” Xohn said with mild exasperation.

“Okay, fine.” Lee took a breath. “Thank you,” he added as an afterthought while turning to walk up the ramp.

“You’re welcome. My goodness, you’d think it was your dog I kicked or something.” Xohn shook his head.

“Boys, please,” Reeves sighed. “Can we get on with it?”

Lee chuckled as he approached the inner door. He turned back to look at Xohn with a grin, “Xohn, I’ve missed you.” Lee enjoyed every minute of watching Xohn’s eyes go wide.

“What did they do to you in prison?”

He looked over at Reeves, who gave them both an impatient scowl. “I’ll tell you about it later. Let’s find out what Duryss is up to.” Lee walked through the central corridor for the flight deck. As he approached mid-ship, some banging noises from a starboard compartment caught his attention and stopped him in his tracks. He turned back to Xohn following behind him. He half-whispered, “Do you hear that?”

Xohn nodded with a look of concern.

Lee took the adjoining corridor to investigate. Opening the compartment, he found someone welding a reinforcement strut to the hull. “Hey, who the screb…?”

They stopped welding and said through their mask, “Oh, you’re back. That was quick!”

“Why is it everyone thinks they can mess around with my ship?”

The technician pulled off their mask and revealed a full head of red curls. Zee stood from her crouched position, putting a hand to her hip with a raised eyebrow, “Oh?”

“Oh, Zee,” he chuckled. “I thought you were some tech from Novandra Dock Ops! I was about to deck you!”

She crossed her arms, “I’m sorry, I thought you might want this ship to survive combat.” Her eyes shot daggers at him.

Reeves half snorted behind him, and Xohn snickered.

“Right,” he scratched the back of his head. “Sorry, but you know how protective I get with her.”

“Nice to know you care about something that much,” her tone said everything about the thin ice he was on. “Did you get the evidence on Duryss yet?”

“No, I…” Lee was still caught off guard. “I still need to… I gotta… go…” he pointed toward the main corridor, “Gotta… do the thing.”

He started to leave the doorway and heard her call out, “Hey!”

He stopped and leaned back through the door frame. “Be careful, okay?” Zee said with an earnest expression.

“Of course! Sheesh, everyone’s in such a mood today,” Lee grumbled, passing Reeves and Xohn on his way to the flight deck. He led them through the corridors and said, “You know she’s right, this isn’t going to be a walk in the park. I expect he’s got strong encryption and probably anti-intrusion countermeasures.”

He climbed into his flight chair and looked around the cabin. Everything felt right again. At least there was that. Reeves and Xohn stood behind him on either side of his shoulders.

He activated his datapad to transfer control of the bot to the Nightcrawler’s controls. With a theatrical crack of his fingers, he grabbed the flight stick and throttle, “Alright, here we go, little guy.”

Lee turned the bot around to check the surroundings. A window on the lower HUD terminal displayed the camera feed of the bot. The view had an exaggerated perspective owing to the wide-angle of the bot’s camera. It showed the immense gallery leading to tiny double doors of the Governor’s office in the distance, and an empty chair at the desk the bot was on. Thankfully the assistant he spoke to earlier was now off assisting somewhere else.

He tested the throttle back and forth to gauge the movement. When he felt ready, he rolled the bot to the edge of the desk, slowing up in time to gently fall over it onto the seat of the chair below. The display shook with the landing, and he immediately had to catch it from rolling off the curve of the seat cushion. He aimed to do the same off of the chair onto the floor of the gallery. The curved seat required him to compensate. He got it mostly right, and the scene on his display jarred with the impact. Interference lines jumped across the image from the connection interruption. The sound meter overlay on his display peaked with the landing. Lee punched a toggle above the screen to pipe the bot’s sound feed into the cabin.

He gave the flight stick a slight twitch, and the bot righted itself to match his inputs. Swiveling the bot, he aimed it toward the gallery columns and the wall beyond to help keep the bot out of eyesight. The velocity caused it to bounce against the wall before its heading settled toward the end of the hall. Lee kept it at full throttle past column after column. After what seemed like a minute or so, he eased back the throttle, so it didn’t smash into the intersecting wall. The bot came to a stop before the corner, and Lee had to inch it forward with a couple extra thrusts of the throttle. With a twist of the flight stick, the bot turned toward the doors, and he eased it onward again.

A sudden noise spiked on the sound meter, and the heavy oaken double doors swung open. Lee immediately stopped the bot but turned it to watch the hall. The doors hung, floating open before they began a slow, gentle swing to close. The view showed a male figure walking beside a thin feminine one. Then the bot picked up their conversation.

“…and let Colonel Reeves know her fleet must be underway by 1730. There isn’t a moment to lose. Get the Knight ready to depart for…” The voice of Consular Duryss trailed away with distance. Lee quickly tapped the auxiliary terminal controls to command the bot to focus its sensor array toward the sound and amplify it.

The feminine voice of his assistant came through the cabin, “…entirely wise, sir?”

“It is crucial I am there personally to rally the populace. There is no other way to win against… against what’s coming.”

“Yes, sir. With the Resistance in the area, you should at least have a military escort.”

“That won’t be necessary. They’ll never see me coming in…” The voices cut off suddenly.

“The lift,” Reeves said. “They took it to the transport level.”

Lee nodded and pushed the controls to move the bot through the remnant slit of the open doorway before the heavy doors shut. A thud sounded somewhere behind the bot, replicated in the Nightcrawler’s cabin. Turning the bot back and forth, Lee tried to survey the new surroundings. The room felt enormous, both from the perspective of the tiny bot, and the real scale of the high ceilings. On the left, a floor to ceiling window let in light that poured on to the desk centered in the chamber. Lee pushed the throttle to move the bot to the desk, then moved his hands into position at the keys before the terminal.

“Showtime,” he said and began cycling through scanning routines. In this case, he settled on Medium, a program adept at detecting faint signals such as background signals designed to look like ambient noise. The program began feeding back a list of sources. Lee chose one from the list at random, listed as “S22T”. It quickly became apparent it was normal network traffic.

He knew he needed to isolate a close-range channel, something much higher wavelength. He scrolled down into the E-range channels. On instinct, he selected “S91E”. Channels in the exahertz range were very high bandwidth but easily dampened by barriers. They had to be used for very short-range communication. “Well, well, what do we have here? It looks like he has a private server,” he commented, dropping out of the scanner and into the communication stack he designed.

He set the configuration to use terminal display connection protocols and opened a connection. The connection initiated a handshake that ended with an authentication challenge.

Lee looked back at Reeves, “Time to see if this identity works.” He issued the identity and waited for the verification process to complete. After a moment, the terminal began filling with multiple streams of data.

“It looks like gibberish,” Reeves said. “Did it work?”

“Oh yeah, it worked alright. That’s instructions for a display, along with a channel of information, and…” Lee worked the keys, “There.”

A frame on Lee’s console acted as a remote display for the system.

Reeves put a hand on the back of his chair and leaned forward to see the display more clearly. “So, can you look for secure message records, or maybe his meeting schedule?”

Lee continued to work, launching more tools he’d loaded onto the bot. “First, I need to sweep for countermeasures. It’s almost guaranteed…”

His display turned red—all the text, the interface, everything.

“What’s that?” Xohn asked, alarm in his voice.

“That… is a system countermeasure. My connection watchdog detected it. We have maybe five or ten minutes to find whatever it is we’re looking for and log off before their trace finds the bot. I just need to…” Lee’s fingers flew over the keys to launch a counter-tracer.

“Mirage? What’s that do?” Xohn asked again, nervousness still lingering.

“It moves through the system adding false ‘echo’ of virus fingerprints onto executables it finds all over the system. It’ll slow down the scanner and buy us some time.” He rubbed the sweat off of his palms onto his pants, stretching his hands before his fingers hit the keys again to launch another tool.

“Heimdallr,” Reeves commented in a low voice after seeing it appear on Lee’s screen. “From some ancient mythology, if I recall.”

“Well, in this case, it guards my connection against attack.”

“Attacks?” She said with alarm.

“Yeah, I’d like to avoid feedback attacks, like hunter-seekers or brain-spikes. There’s a reason I don’t use implants. Hacking high-security servers can be… physically dangerous.”

Reeves scoffed, “Even over wireless–”

“Yes,” Lee interrupted. He pulled his hands from the keys and looked over his shoulder. “Look, do you want me to explain everything or find the data?” With silence from both Reeves and Xohn, he returned to his work. He focused on configuring the search parameters for appointments, messages, and transactions. “Ok, I’ve spun up a process to find anything and everything. It’s going to take a bit…” The progress bar on the display didn’t appear to budge at all.

“What about the scan?” Xohn asked.

“Yeah, we’ll see,” Lee shrugged.

Reeves put a hand up to rub at her temples, “That’s not encouraging, Mr. Sollinger.”

Lee cocked his head, “Sorry. How about, ‘we might get lucky’?”

The display terminal flashed red each time the anti-intrusion scanner found a false fingerprint. It was unnerving, but helpful for Lee to track its progress. It was too much for Xohn, who paced behind the flight chair. Reeves stood behind his chair with a stoic, unreadable expression on her face.

The terminal flashed red again.

“This is intolerable,” Xohn muttered behind him.

“And the scan is getting closer. It’s speeding up on the false signatures, not slowing down.”

Another red flash. The progress bar was still less than halfway.

“Is there anything you can do to speed it up?”

“I could try to kill the scan process, but it risks other sentries discovering our connection.”

“How does that speed things up?” Reeves asked.

“More cycles and I/O for our data miner, since it won’t have to compete for as many resources. That and killing it means not having to worry about the scans. I can shutdown Mirage, too.”

Another red flash.

“It seems worth the risk,” Reeves said. “What do you have that can kill it?”

“Hmm…” Lee looked through his tools. “Ahh, yes… VoidKiller. It coerces the process to execute code inside a null page with divide by null instructions.” He queued it up but hesitated over the key to run it.

“Ok, so run it,” Reeves urged.

The display flashed again.

Lee half looked back at her, keeping his hand above the key to launch it. “If a sentry finds it before the scanner calls the crash instructions… countermeasures could do some real damage here.”

“We don’t have the time to waste. Run it.” There was a commanding tone in her voice that put Lee on edge. She sighed and pushed his hand onto the control.

The display flashed red. Lee’s terminal showed output from VoidKiller. In mere moments the data mining process surged to 97%. Then his display rapidly flashed red over and over.

“What’s that?” Xohn exclaimed.

“Our connection’s been detected!”